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Nancy nodded with wide eyes. “Good luck, you two.”
“Thanks,” Damon said with the same seriousness.
“To the attic.”Celia floated out of the room with Damon and Kay on her heels. When they got there, she walked over to a rolling rack of clothing and pushed it over. The rack smashed to the floor loudly, and Celia grinned.“Most definitely a poltergeist.”She reached up to a shelf and swiped her arm across it to send boxes tumbling to the floor.“They’re so destructive.”
“Hey!” Kay cried as Celia reached for another shelf. “Be careful. Let’s not break precious heirlooms.”
Celia let out a sigh and sat down at an old piano. She slammed her hands down on the keys a few times, then, while staring at Damon and Kay with a mischievous look in her eyes, she opened her mouth and let out a bloodcurdling scream. At first it made Kay jump, but as she listened, she was fascinated by the way Celia slowly lowered the volume of her cry as if the one screaming was running away. When she finished, Celia calmly took a breath and smiled.“That ought to do it. One poltergeist gone.”
“Nice,” Damon said with obvious admiration.
Kay nodded as she walked over to the coat rack to restore it to its upright position. “That was clever, Celia. I’m impressed too.” She bent to pick up the clothing.
Damon squatted down to put the contents of the boxes the spirit had knocked to the floor back in order. When he noticed the spirit wasn’t doing anything he said, “Celia. A little help here.”
“Goodness,”she said. “Will you look at the time? Gotta skedaddle. Another gig, you know.”She walked through the wall of the attic and disappeared.
“Figures,” Kay muttered.
“We did a good thing,” Damon said as he reached up and placed a box on its shelf. “Now Nancy will think her vampire is gone and be able to sleep again.”
She knew he was right. Nancy hadn’t been in the state of mind to believe in words alone. She had needed to be convinced, and Celia’s theatrics had likely done the trick. “I guess.”
“Hey, we don’t charge people for our services, and we make people feel safe, Kay.”
It occurred to her that their deception was going to get out. “What is the plan for when Nancy hears about what we did?”
Damon frowned.
“Your show?”
He smiled. “I would never make her feel foolish if that’s what you’re worried about. I have no intention of broadcasting this. While the chances are slim, it may get out and we’ll tell her the truth if it does. I’m sure by then she’ll understand what we did was necessary at the time.”
Kay nodded, pleased he had the decency to keep Nancy’s dignity intact. “I guess that makes today a waste of time for you.”
“Not at all,” Damon said. He studied her for a moment.
“What?”
“You still have such a low opinion of me. Why?”
He sounded hurt, and shame burned in Kay. She realized she continued to assume the worst of him, and it wasn’t fair. “I’m sorry. You don’t deserve it.”
“Have dinner with me.”
She opened her mouth to object, but guilt made her say, “Sure.” And the relief she saw on Damon’s face filled her heart with a warmth she didn’t want to feel. Kay shook it off because falling for the handsome wizard was the last thing she should do.
11
Damon
The second Damonasked Kay to have dinner with him he knew he wasn’t being fair. He’d used her shame to his advantage and jumped on the opportunity to get her to go out with him out of guilt. But that wasn’t going to stop him from following through. So when he dropped Kay off at her house after their ghost hunting expedition, they consulted their work calendars and found a night they were both free a week later.
The washer beeped when he pushed the start button, and he replayed the last time they were together, which was at Nancy Edmonds’ house. He thought about how Kay had assumed he was going to exploit Nancy for his own gain. While Damon hadn’t expected her to fall all over him the way many women did, it bothered him that Kay thought so poorly of him.
Clothes thumped softly into a laundry basket as he removed them from the dryer, and as he lifted up a pair of jeans to fold them determination filled him. He was going to have to show Kay he was not who she thought he was. Bri had said he was a Brannigan as if that explained why the Knight women were surprised to find out he was nice, and he knew that he had more than the Halloween stunt his brothers and he had pulled over a decade ago to overcome.
The real trouble was his father, Paul. The man took pride to an extreme, and he wasn’t willing to budge an inch when it came to taking blame for the graveyard incident. It was a shame, really. Paul had become a bitter old man destined to be alone, save for his kids, who felt a sense of duty to stick around until they married. He worried Natalie might stay forever. His brothers did too. She was a nurturer, and they feared she might never leave Paul to start a family of her own.
